Operators of communication networks face a challenge in how to secure mobile broadband revenues.
The tremendous uptake in mobile broadband subscribers and data volume will require substantial investments in operators' telecom infrastructure. On the other hand, users will expect their operator to deliver the service experience they have paid for. Thus, operator revenues from mobile broadband rely on satisfied customers.
A small fraction of the users generates traffic exceeding those of normal users with magnitude. In many networks, these heavy users are consuming a quite large part of the network resources today. Experience shows that heavy users normally constitutes of 5-10% of the total subscribers, but could consume 70-85% of the network resources. It has been shown that often the heavy users are the biggest consumers of the network resources also during busy hour.
However, operators need to secure there investments in communications infrastructure by safeguarding their revenue by limiting their credit risks.
Operators limit their credit risk by using real time charging systems wherein authorization of services is continuously under surveillance of the charging system.
Irrespective of whether a subscriber is given a zero credit limit thereby having to prepay for their services, or are allowed a non-zero credit limit to be paid after the service is rendered, e.g. via a monthly bill, real time charging is used to secure that subscriber cannot exceed its allowed credit limit.
For similar reasons end users expect control over their charges and demands an equally safe control over their spending.
Today and in the future, operators are introducing new premium services, for example ring tones download, TV, video streaming, VoIP, etc. To make sure that the subscribers get the best end user experience while consuming these premium services real time charging is used to safeguard operator credit risk and end user spending control while these services are when being accessed.
In order to handle charging control coping with the increased need for real time credit control, the 3rd Generation Partnership Project 3GPP has in TS 32.299 V10.1.0 (2011-03) specified a Diameter based offline and online charging applications for 3GPP networks. The offline charging mechanism is where charging information does not affect, in real-time, the service rendered. In contrast, online charging is the charging mechanism where charging information can affect, in real-time, the service rendered and therefore a direct interaction of the charging mechanism with session/service control is required.
However, a problem with the charging architecture as defined by 3GPP is that it does not provide a mechanism to handle the increased signaling and load on the communication network when the number of requests in a given time interval increases due to higher demands on accuracy, more frequent users and/or increasing number of services often used in parallel.